


Private Primiere

by fencingfox



Series: This October Night [29]
Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Dress Up, F/M, Fictober 2019, Holodecks/Holosuites, Inktober 2019, Kinktober 2019, Minor Injuries, Whumptober 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-29
Updated: 2019-10-29
Packaged: 2021-01-08 07:55:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21232391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fencingfox/pseuds/fencingfox
Summary: Klingon. Human. They're two halves of the same coin otherwise known as B'Elanna.





	Private Primiere

**Author's Note:**

> Anybody ever wonder if actors, like, go on AO3 or FF to read what the fandom thinks of their characters?
> 
> Thank you LadyArreya for sending me that video of Roxann Dawson dancing on stage! It inspired this piece.
> 
> Fiftieth story! Let's go!

* * *

**| "I’m doing this for you." | numb | cosplay/dresses up | injured |**

* * *

"Why didn't you tell me before?" Tom's voice drifts into B'Elanna's holographic dressing room. She's already dressed, just checking herself in the full mirror because she's (nervous) being thorough. She'd never performed for anyone. Tom's tone irks her. Just because they're dating, doesn't mean she has to tell him everything. Her bout of depression is testament to that, but she reminds herself that it isn't a healthy example. 

"I didn't know I was supposed to." Her voice sounds a bit callous to her ears. She isn't sure Tom will pick that up from his place in the other holographic room. 

"...If you don't want me here, then just say so." He sounds hesitant, and B'Elanna's stomach drops. She only realizes now that she doesn't want him to leave. It's important to her that he approves, even if the whole point in the beginning was to choose something her mother would disapprove of. 

"No, no. I'm doing this for you," she corrects. Then, so he doesn't form any ideas to record or share, she adds: "only you." B'Elanna takes a steadying breath. She should start soon. She'll get more nervous staring at herself. 

"...So, do you wear a tutu?" B'Elanna laughs as she steps out to the bright 'stage', smoothing her simple, black dancer's dress. The stage is nothing more than a dance studio: bright lights, stretch bars, wood floors, three walls of mirrors. 

"No." Tom's jaw practically hits the floor. B'Elanna looks down, blushing, certain that his eyes are memorizing every square inch of her body: from her braided hair crown to her flowing short dress to her black ballet flats and their ribbons crisscrossing up her calves to be tied above the curve of them. She focuses on taking deep breaths. Sure, he'd seen her naked, but this is different. This is her, her childhood, and her insecurities wrapped in one. He'd never seen her this naked. 

"Wow. B'Elanna, you're stunning." She blushes more under his compliment. She glances up and regrets it because her blush is probably making her irresistible to him. To her pleasure, he stays seated in the lone folding chair against the long wall that's devoid of mirrors. The mirrored wall is to her back, so she won't get distracted while performing. 

"Tom, I'm not going to be able to dance if you keep looking at me like that." 

"Like what?" 

"Like you want to pin me to this floor." He smirks but also blushes. She smiles shyly back. 

"I won't deny it." 

"Tom!" She laughs, but his comment is actually making her feel more at ease. He's nothing if not devoted and gentle. She can be vulnerable. B'Elanna moves to the center of the room and lies down facing Tom. Her left arm stretches out under her head and her right palm rests on the ground to help her up. She takes a few more breaths and then bids the computer to begin the song her instructor suggested when she was a little girl. She still knows the dance to it. She waits for her cue. 

When the song starts, she pushes herself from the ground into a sitting position with her legs folded to the side. She flips her right leg forward to stand on it and takes third position with her feet while rounding her arms down in front of her. Just before the lyrics start, she raises them and twists so that she can kick her right foot back at the knee on the first word. 

She feels clumsy performing now, but she reminds herself that she's practiced this dance a lot lately. She should be able to do it fine. That thought steadies her as she pulls her right foot behind her and takes a lunging position to circle her arms back, arching her chest dramatically. 

She's proud of how the choreography sways and pauses with the music. One of her favorite times for that is right here. She rises, swinging her right foot forward and touching her knee with her opposite hand. She holds the pose on her left toe with her right hand stretched above her for a beat. Then she swings her right foot back from the hip and drops into a half-hunch with bent knees. 

She hasn't seen Tom yet. Her choreography doesn't permit looking at the audience until this moment. She swings her torso to the right and then up in a large circle and catches his eye. She's thrown by how intently he's watching her and almost misses her cue to roll to the ground. She purposely looks past him when she arches her back up and presses her thighs to the ground in a cobra pose. 

Now that she knows his eyes are on her, she has trouble focusing. It makes her body tight and she has a little more trouble than usual spreading into and then rolling out of a front split to sitting. She does her best to focus on the movements of extending her right foot straight into the air while balancing on her knee and left palm. She can't look at him now. He'll throw her off. She rises and flits over a few steps to prepare for her spins. 

There are four spins in moderate succession. She drags her free toe on the ground for the last one in order to slow enough for her standing split. Here is where the choreography becomes more dynamic with the song. Her favorite part is coming up: four spins, then a spinning half-leap, and one final spinning leap before collapsing to the ground. She thinks about it in the back of her mind as she moves through the slow and easy full body swaying and elegant spins. She rises on her right foot in an elongated, nearly horizontal, stretch on the song's beat. She lands, spins once for the back of the room, spins to reach forward dramatically, and then flits to the back corner to prepare for her favorite part. 

Her heart is pounding quickly because she knows without looking that she has Tom's undivided attention. She pauses with her right hand and foot extended forward and her left hand extended to her side at the shoulder. After a quick breath, she raises her right hand and steps forward into bent knees, lowering her hands at the same time. The spins are quick, two-footed toe spins. She raises her arms up from her sides as she moves diagonally across the floor. When her hands reach their highest point, she catches Tom's attentive eye without meaning to. Although, she brings her hands into the correct position at her waist timely, she stalls into the spinning half-leap. The stall makes her unsteady on the land, but she still has the momentum to continue. Her final leap, the one where she turns her body half a circle and takes a long jump, starts wrong. 

B'Elanna rolls her ankle outwards when she lands on her right foot. She collapses as her weight falls to the foot and it gives out sideways under her. Whereas the proper collapse should have been nearly silent, this one is accompanied by a loud yelp and the deep thud of her body hitting the holographic wood floor. It's ironic where in the song she'd fallen: "I bleed when I fall down." 

She shifts her foot and finds that the whole ankle region feels numb. It looks to already be swelling. She could be bleeding internally. She hears Tom's chair clatter, but doesn't look up to see if it'd fallen too. 

"B'Elanna!" His hands hover near her ankle. The music crescendos without her. She looks up at his face and then away. He must think her a fool for hurting herself. "Can you walk?" She shakes her head, aware that the blush on her cheeks is from nothing more than embarrassment. She wants to disappear. She'd performed that leap thousands of times flawlessly before. Why did she have to mess up in front of _Tom_? 

Tom works an arm under B'Elanna's knees. Rolling her feet until the bottoms are flat on the ground hurts some so she draws a sharp breath. The pain is gone as soon as it occurs. Tom puts his other arm around her back and lifts her. She clings to his neck, but can't bear to look at his face. She wonders what he thinks of her reddened cheeks and botched performance. 

"Computer, two to transport to Sickbay." The tingling swirl of being separated into a billion little atoms to move through the buffer to Sickbay washes over B'Elanna. When next she's aware, seemingly no time has passed and Tom holds her in the middle of Sickbay. 

He moves her to sit straight-legged on the nearest bio-bed. He doesn't bother calling for the Doctor. Tom moves to a nearby pedestal, performing his own kind of dance to select a medical tricorder and bring it to scan her ankle. He frowns, turns away, and returns with an osteo regenerator in one hand and a dermal regenerator in the other. He sets them down next to her feet at the end of the bed. Tom aligns her ankle carefully (it still hurts) and keeps one soothingly warm hand on it when he passes the osteo regenerator over the region. It starts to feel better quickly. Tom releases her ankle and switches to the dermal regenerator. After several passes the swelling is gone and her foot feels almost normal. He turns away with both regenerators and returns them to where he got them before coming to her side. 

She'd been watching his movements only because he didn't seem like he would look up. Now that he's free to look anywhere other than her foot, she tears her eyes away from his form to look down at her hands in her lap. 

"B'Elanna?" She _needs_ to disappear. Quickly, she swings her legs to the same side of the bed that he stands. She moves to get up. His warm hand moves to the top of her left thigh. She freezes. He takes the opportunity to kiss her cheek. "You were beautiful." Her mouth quirks into a smile. She finds the courage to look up at him. He's smiling gently. There's no trace of disappointment in his eyes. 

"Thank you." 

"Why did you pick that song?" She shrugs. 

"I didn't pick it. My instructor did." She thinks back to the kind middle-aged man. He actually reminds her a bit of Tom now. Though, that's not much of a surprise. She had the biggest crush on him as a shy seven-year-old. He's her example for how someone of the opposite gender should treat her: not scared to stick around when she's frustrated or angry. He offers her a hand up, the same hand that was on her thigh a moment ago. She takes it and holds it as they walk back together. Her foot feels much better. She could probably dance on it already. 

"Did you do ballet to get away from your mother?" B'Elanna thinks back to the frame of mind she'd had as a seven-year-old. 

"Everything Mom wanted had to do with Klingon this or Klingon that. She seemed to forget I wasn't exactly like her." 

"You are human too." B'Elanna smiles. That very point is why she continues practicing the dance for the song even now. It's freeing to move with the music, growing more and more bold. Tom snickers as they board an empty turbolift. 

"What?" 

"Nothing. I realized you don't always bleed when you fall down. Sometimes you swear." She laughs, amazed by how good Tom is at pulling her out of sour moods. She aught to keep him around if only for that reason. They exit the turbolift on her deck. The two of them pause outside her door. Tom holds her waist. His hands warm her skin through the thin fabric of the dress. "You know, I never knew you could do the splits..." He smiles suggestively. This is another reason she keeps him around. She twists to palm the keypad for entry. His hands stay where they are. 

"Want to see them again?" She murmurs. He hums approvingly. She draws him inside. If anyone had passed her doorway before the door closed, they would have seen the opening of a different dance.

**Author's Note:**

> You should watch the video I shamelessly based B'Elanna's performance on: https://youtu.be/pn0eu51DvOI?t=22
> 
> The best part is that the director's last name is _Torres_. I know it's a common name but still!


End file.
